When Lena Spencer died in 1989 after falling down the stairs at her Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, the coffeehouse might have died, too. But in 29 years, Spencer, jovial, hardheaded and single-minded, had nurtured a community around folk music and her intimate club that refused to let it close.

Musicians, volunteers and others in her cafe family raised money, formed a board of directors and incorporated as a nonprofit organization. Fifty years after the first concert in the second-floor loft on Phila Street, Spencer's cafe still lives -- as the oldest continuously operating coffeehouse in the country.

That is Spencer's legacy. It will be celebrated Friday and Saturday with concerts, including one by Arlo Guthrie, at Caffe Lena and Skidmore College. Guthrie performed at Lena's numerous times, along with Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and "everybody who was anybody in folk music," in the words of Bill Staines, the New Hampshire folk singer.

"It's like the North Star of the folk music world," said Staines, who has performed at Caffe Lena twice a year since 1968. "Lena was the guiding light for years and years and years."

She opened Caffe Lena in May 1960 with her husband, Bill, a sculptor. Two years later, Bill, who was teaching at Skidmore, ran off with a student, and that was the end of the marriage. Lena became just that more determined to make a success of the 85-seat coffeehouse, booking the acts, answering the phone, taking tickets, introducing the musicians on stage and baking cookies and Italian pastries for her customers.

"The folk music scene had caught fire, and Lena became the hostess and focus of that," said George Ward, a musician, folklorist and member of the cafe's board of directors. "She learned about the singers and how to present them and how to connect with the networks. She eventually became an impresario and a taste-maker, and she took it very seriously."

Dylan played at Caffe Lena twice, in 1961 and 1962. The first time was his initial performance outside New York City after moving East from Minnesota.

Musicians Spencer didn't know had to audition before she booked them. Then, often as not, a booking included a room and meals at Spencer's apartment in downtown Saratoga Springs.

"She was like a den mother," said Bill Morrissey, a New Hampshire musician who first played at Lena's in the early 1980s. "She couldn't have been nicer."

Her first love, however, was theater. Spencer opened a small playhouse adjacent to the cafe, above Hattie's restaurant. She acted in some plays, and when she introduced musicians in the coffeehouse, she often recited a poem or performed a snippet of a scene from a play. Her Christmas programs included her reading Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales."

"Sometimes she did it ensemble with friends, and sometimes she read it herself," Ward said. "That became a feature of our Christmas lives."

The plays "nourished Lena's soul, and sometimes her bottom line," he said. "There have been times when the theater was all there was between the cafe and closing. Not because the theater made so much money, but because pennies made a difference."

The gas crisis of the early 1970s and the rise of new wave and punk music, at the expense of folk, nearly put Lena's out of business. Spencer began losing her eyesight, developed heart problems and eventually moved into the cafe, fashioning a bedroom in back.

"Lena had no money," said Andy Spence, a longtime friend and the director of Old Songs, which promotes traditional music. "She was illegally living in the cafe. Things had gotten pretty sad."

On Sept. 9, 1989, after the sound check for the evening concert, Spencer fell down the steps at Caffe Lena, slipped into a coma at Ellis Hospital and died a month and a half later. She was 66.

Spence led the community effort to preserve the coffeehouse. It wasn't easy; members of the cafe family clashed over plans for its future. But eventually a board of directors took over, and it has guided Caffe Lena to its 50th year.

Spencer has been the inspiration. She once told a reporter: "I don't have a formula. I couldn't sit down and write a book on how to run a coffeehouse. All I can say is just do it with a whole bunch of love, not with the attitude that you're in it to make money, but that you're in it to serve."

Tom Keyser can be reached at 454-5448 or by e-mail at tkeyser@timesunion.com